


tear down the walls babe (let me in)

by staticfiction



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 18:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticfiction/pseuds/staticfiction
Summary: The one where Sungjin lands himself a friend with benefits so now he's stuck in this place waiting for a change





	tear down the walls babe (let me in)

**Author's Note:**

> it's three in the morning and I'm trying to change your mind

Even on his free days Sungjin comes home to the apartment a little after half-past three in the morning. Some nights he catches Jae on the PS4, other nights it’s Brian studying or composing. Always, they offer him the same concerned expression and the barely concealed apprehensiveness behind their sympathies. Such is the occupational hazard of living with your band in an apartment meant to house two instead of five. In time, Sungjin has learned to selectively filter out that which bother him, that which he can’t control, and those which both bother him and cannot control. So he pays them no mind and goes straight to him room.

Tonight, however, he feels Jae’s eyes linger on the back of his shoulder a little longer than usual. It’s a ghost of a feeling, something Sungjin suspects is more of a projection of his own worries than Jae’s true intentions. But just as Sungjin shuts the bedroom door behind him, he hears Jae mutter to himself: I hope she’s worth it.

As Sungjin prepares for bed, he thinks the same.  _ Me, too _ , he sighs.  _ I really hope this is worth it. _

  
  


Technically, they aren’t dating.

Contractually speaking, Sungjin isn’t allowed to date. Another occupational hazard. It’s fine. Not a big deal. Sungjin likes to think he’s reached a level of self-actualization that puts him beyond the societal pressure to be in a relationship if all it means is conforming to his generation’s ridiculous standards of what it means to live a life. He’s in a rock band signed under a major label’s vanity indie project. He’s performing the music he makes, and getting acknowledged on his own merit. That’s more life than anyone his age can say. Not as much life as he had hoped, but at least they were getting somewhere. He isn’t  _ lonely _ , but even if he were he’s not afraid of being lonely so long as he sees a promising future ahead of him.

But he didn’t see her coming. Sungjin did not expect  _ this _ . Not the heated caress of her lips on the shell of his ear, or the sweet sigh of her breath into his mouth, or the kindling heat in his chest whenever she’s near. Years wondering if there was something wrong with him and asking himself whether his sense of desire was broken, all laid to rest when he first vanished into her kiss.

A quarter of a century in this life, and Sungjin never knew he could feel like this.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, pulling back enough to study his face.

Sungjin anchors his hands on her hips to keep her in place on his lap. He lifts his gaze but she looks away before he can catch her eyes. “You.”

“What are you thinking about me for?” she whispers, running her nose down the side of his jaw. “I’m right here.”

And that was the problem. Because  _ this _ is all they ever will be. A willing body at the end of the night, two separate voids filled with anything but the truth. She is his, but only for tonight. This was what he willingly agreed to. Something so vague, it may not have been real at all. But Sungjin will take what he can get. Graciously accepting what she gives him while silently begging for her to let him inside her walls— it’s not ideal, but a foot through the door is still better than having it shut in his face. Something is better than nothing.

So he threads his fingers in her hair, holds her so close there’s a line he’s crossing somewhere, and pours all his longing into one kiss. Something about her always feels like a dream, familiar though he doesn’t really know her and fleeting because he could wake up any moment and lose her. So he relishes this moment as if it were his last, knowing that one misstep and it may as well be. And when it does end, Sungjin will have nothing to prove his time with her really did happen— no photographs, no receipts, no songs written about her smile or her voice. All he will have is a faint memory, like a song he can’t remember all the words to, but he’ll remember the music. He’ll hum a tune he can’t seem to get off his mind, but he’ll never truly understand why it’s there at all. He will remember kissing her, he will remember making love to her, how much he’ll remember feeling her heart beat against his.

It hasn’t happened yet, but even now as his calloused fingers trace a loving path down her skin Sungjin wonders if he’s ever truly been in this room at all. Yet somehow he just knows that his heart will never leave this bed. 

  
  


They aren’t dating. They are something else entirely, but Sungjin isn’t sure there’s a word for it yet. “We’re friends,” he says when Jae asks him during practice. It’s too late in the evening, and Sungjin’s too tired to come up with anything but the simplest explanation he could think of.

“With benefits?” Jae scoffs. It’s not a malicious scoff. Jae’s reaction stems from disbelief rather than judgment. Sungjin doesn’t blame him. Nothing about sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet with someone makes sense. Had the roles been reversed, Sungjin will be coming down on Jae like...well like his father. And his mother. And the Boss Man Park Jinyoung.

“Don’t say it like that.” Sungjin’s eyes dart around the room, at Wonpil with his eyes closed and his headphones on and at Dowoon with his head down taking down notes on the sheet music he’s studying. Brian is on the floor, eyes focused on the body of his bass guitar. Maybe  _ too _ focused.

“But that’s what you are.”

Light on the friends, heavy with the benefits. Though at this point, Sungjin isn’t sure what the benefits are anymore. While he enjoys spending time with her, he can’t say for certain she feels the same way. Except maybe when she’s doing him no good. Which is still  _ really good _ , but the signals are all over the place Sungjin never knows if they’re falling in love. Months in and he still doesn’t really know her. Not in the way you know a person when you’re properly dating. Sungjin isn’t constantly exchanging messages with her or talking on the phone with her all night every night, and she’s not coming to see his shows or offering him words of encouragement when he’s doubting himself. Months in and there remains this abstract concept of time and distance between them, a wall not meant to be breached. All Sungjin really knows is the taste of her lips and the feel of her nails digging half-moons on his back.

He reaches for his phone inside the pocket of his jeans.

“What are you doing?” Jae asks, swinging his guitar behind him and looking at Sungjin from over his wire-framed glasses.

Sungjin swipes at his screen and finds no new messages.

“My man, Sungjin, have some self-respect. This is  _ so _ not you. What happened to Park Sungjin, the immovable object?”

“I’m just checking in on her.” Friends do that, don’t they? Nevermind that the last couple of messages (eight this week and it’s only Thursday, but not that he’s counting) has been met with radio silence. 

“Bro. Do  _ not _ call her. For the love of all that is sacred on this God-given Earth,  _ do not _ call her. Brian, back me up here.”

Brian looks up, feigning surprise and ignorance on his face. “What are we talking about?”

Sungjin levels him with a long-suffering look.

“Call her if you want,” Brian says without losing a beat. “Just don’t go running to her after midnight after just one message from her.”

Sungjin shoves his phone back into his pocket and picks up Baba, his white Gibson Les Paul. “Let’s just get back to work.”

In the end he resists the urge to call her. Sungjin doesn’t even think of her for the rest of the night and until the following morning when a song playing in the office reminds him of her and when Brian comes up to him with lyrics to the music they wrote last night.

“Good to know my emotional distress is fueling your songwriting,” Sungjin deadpans, handing Brian back his notebook. They’re sitting across each other on their work desk, pieces of paper and sheet music spread out between them. Jae, Wonpil, and Dowoon are out on a coffee run, leaving them about twenty minutes of peace.

“You’re welcome,” Brian shoots back, just a little bit smug. He plucks a pencil from the metal holder and starts doodling on the edge of the page. “It’s the least I could do.”

“Remind me never to talk to you about anything personal ever again.”

“It’s a little too late for that,” Brian answers good-naturedly. “We’ve already crossed that line a couple of years back. Stay strong. I believe in you. Why are your nostrils flaring like that?”

Sungjin schools his features back to neutral. “You’re lucky your face has international value now.”

  
  


Sungjin lets himself into her apartment using his own key. Because it’s convenient for him to have his own, and they’re all for convenience. It happens after the twelfth or so visit. Just as Sungjin was leaving the door, she called out to him and aimed something at his face. Sungjin caught it mid-flight and before he could ask, she was already saying things like, “Shut up. Just don’t comment on it. Open the door yourself next time you come over.”

It still doesn’t mean he’s her boyfriend.

It does, however, give him a glimpse into her life. The pieces of her soul she consciously keeps away from his eyes. Unguarded moments are always the most telling, and Sungjin is undeniably in love with what he sees. Be it the pencil in her mouth while he waits for her to finish work, or her humming in the shower, or the scattered pieces of her personality strewn across her studio apartment.

She keeps telling him to stop cleaning up, but he can’t help it sometimes. He sees a mess, he has to clean up. Sometimes he wonders if the same applies for her. The thought bothers him for days.

“Are you wearing a sweater vest?” she asks when she hears him walk in. Her eyes are still focused on her book, but a small smile slips when her glance flits his way.

“What, I like it. It’s nice.”

She presses her lips together as if to stop herself from talking. A pause, then she says, “It’s terrible. Take it off.”

Sungjin leans against the wall across her, folds his arms over his torso and tilts his head in thought. “Should I seduce you?”

She stops reading and lifts a brow at him, makes herself comfortable on the bed. “Do you know how?”

“Do I know how?” he scoffs. “Try not to fall in love with me.”

Of course, she laughs when he starts into a sexy dance. The actual sexy rating might be a matter of personal preference, but Sungjin owns up to looking like a fool just to make someone laugh. And her laugh, it’s a sound he wants to collect in a glass jar so he can carry it around with him at all times so he can listen to it whenever he misses her. Burying her hands in her face, she falls over to the side just as he climbs next to her in bed. Sungjin runs his nose down the back of her hand, presses a kiss on her knuckles, and she reveals her face so red from laughing so hard. But he also notices the puffiness around her eyes and the dark bags beneath them.

“Look at you, so sexy. Is it getting hot in here?” she wheezes.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Don’t do that.”

Sungjin’s read somewhere, or maybe it was Jae who said it, that people are like locks. You can’t force them. They require patience and tinkering before they open up. And this girl, she’s wound up so tight embracing her pain like a lifeline. When he’s with her like this, Sungjin thinks he can wait. When she’s snuggling into his chest, sighing as if she knows it’s safe to lay her heart on him, he believes that’s he’s stronger than the walls that surround her.

“Don’t do what?”

“Ask how I’m doing.”

“How about when’s the last time you slept like a normal person?”

“Stop that.” Her words may sound harsh, but her fingers grip his shirt tighter and he hears her swallow a lump in her throat.

By the end of this  _ relationship _ , Sungjin will already be an expert in deductive reasoning and behavioral analysis. The mastery will be useful in day-to-day living, but it doesn’t seem worth the cost of ending whatever he has here. Not when he’s barely started.

“Go to sleep,” he murmurs. “You’re exhausted.”

She stifles a yawn. “And waste that sexy dance of yours?”

“I can come back tomorrow night.”

He checks on her when she doesn’t answer immediately. Her eyes are closed, lips slightly agape, and her breathing slowed down to a steady rhythm. Sungjin places a soft kiss in her hair, leaves with it a promise. He can’t stay the night, but one day soon perhaps it could be a reality. Perhaps someday, he can change her mind about him.

  
  


Some nights Sungjin lingers a little longer on her bed. On one of these nights, Sungjin tells her singing is all he’s ever wanted to do. She tells him maybe it’s better if they don’t talk. He tells her about his day anyway, about his dreams, about the reality with his band and his music. He tells her stories of how badly he wants to be heard, that he’ll sing as loud as he has to just to make people listen. Then he asks her to come see them perform. She tells him no. Sungjin doesn’t ask again.

A week later, and without Sungjin prodding, she tangles herself in his limbs and tells him about the first time she felt completely at peace. The way she describes it, Sungjin hopes he could make her feel this way always, like this when she’s in his arms and nothing could be so wrong a kiss can’t fix.

Because whether or not she realizes it, he’s built a home in her eyes.

(She doesn’t tell him this because she has no idea she’s already far too gone the deep end. She says she only calls him when she’s had a few, but she thinks of him often. It’s a secret that’s becoming too hard to hide. Not when all she wants is to spend time with him, hear him singing in her ear, talking to her endlessly about whatever touches his fancy. But...there’s always a but.

Some things are just too complicated. Some people are just too complicated. As for her, she’s spent too long proving herself deserving of love and attention, she just doesn’t know what to do when a good thing comes her way. So she pushes him away. Sometimes she does it on purpose, other times she doesn’t know what she’s done until she’s done it. Always, it leaves a bitter aftertaste in her mouth.

Maybe one day she can put words to the feelings, but for now she plants it as a seed and waters it until it grows big and strong.)

  
  


The first time Sungjin meets her, he spills an iced Americano all over her clothes. They are at a coffee shop near the university area, busking for the third time ever and he’s feeling the nerves together with a sense of  _ something _ he couldn’t quite define. Maybe it’s because they’ve been in the dungeon for so long, being out in the sunlight is disturbing his regular brain functions. Like he’s never seen the sky before.

She takes the situation calmly, laughing it off even when Sungjin sees the distress in her face anyway. He apologizes, offers to buy her another coffee, asks if there’s anything he can do about her clothes— stutters he doesn’t mean anything weird while Jae snickers behind him.  _ It’s fine _ , she says,  _ have a nice day? _ And Sungjin thinks,  _ how bad a day are you having? Can I make it better? _ He should have said it out loud instead of watch her back disappear out the door and down the street.

(“I did cry,” she will confess later on. “I was having the worst day ever and you were the cherry on top of that landslide.”

“Was I at least a cute cherry?” Sungjin will ask, internally hating himself for acting so out of character. 

“You were a very attractive cherry.” Then she will kiss him, and Sungjin accepts this as her saying thank you to him and to the universe that conspired them to meet in this way.)

The second time they run into each other, the band is at a convenience store buying midnight snacks after a live performance at a smaller club. She’s perusing the drinks fridge when he finds himself staring at her. She stares back, unapologetic. This is the first time Sungjin feels as if there’s a barrier being broken down inside him. A feeling that, if he weren’t paying attention, would flit away before he realizes he should chase after it.

Jae talks to her first. Because it’s Jae. “Hey, it’s you again.”

She turns to him, a ghost of a smirk on her face. “Indeed it is. Hello.”

“I believe my friend Sungjin here owes you a coffee,” Jae says, shooting a finger gun at Sungjin.

“Not tonight, boys,” she says. Sungjin isn’t 100% sure but he hears dejection somewhere in her voice. “I’m a little busy tonight. Maybe third time’s a charm.”

Once more, he watches her back disappear from his sight.

(“I really wanted to,” she will admit when asked in the future. “But I sneaked out of work for a couple of minutes and I really needed to get back.”

“I should’ve bought you a coffee anyway.”

“I should’ve given you my number. Who knew if we were ever going to cross paths ever again.”

“Jae said the same thing. He said I needed more game.”

She will laugh. Sungjin won’t mind. “It’s a good thing you don’t.”

Sungjin will take this to mean she prefers having him all to herself. Sungjin won’t mind this either.)

Indeed, the third time is a charm. This time Sungjin finds her seated in a cafe, book in hand and earphones on when the band walks in for a coffee before their live performance at a club nearby. Jae points her out as soon as they walk in, but Sungjin shakes his head and points out she doesn’t look like she wants to be disturbed. So they do as they do, and Jae busies himself with Brian on the pastry racks. Sungjin sits with Dowoon while Wonpil waits for their drinks on the counter. When he looks up, she’s looking at him.

She puts her book down and pulls out her earphones. Then she smiles.

Later that night, Sungjin meets with her at the back of the club where she kisses him for the first time. She says she’s not the type to fall in love, but she can be the one if all he wants is to live in the moment. They could be each other’s best kept secret. Hearts open from midnight to three a.m only. 

(“You looked so lost,” she will say when the memory is brought up. “I thought you were gonna run away.”

“I thought about it, but my legs weren’t moving.”

“Come on, I’m not a bad kisser.”

“You’re a very good kisser. You just took me by surprise.” He’d been kissed before. He’d kissed other girls before. But this was different. New, a bit alarming, but not unwelcome. His brain had downright shut down. Not the point. The point is, this is how it all starts and, despite his better sense, doing something so thoughtless and irrational and irresponsible will soon be his best decision yet.

She will laugh and, someone help him, Sungjin will go weak in the knees at the sound of her laugh. “Well, guys like you need to be kissed often and by someone who knows how.”

He will lean in and kiss her. And though there are words at the tip of his tongue, he will not say them. At least not yet.)

  
  


They can be together if she wants to, but if he’s being honest (and he always is) Sungjin doesn’t want to know the answer to that question. He’s been stuck for so long in some limbo, it’s become his own personal hell. All he needs to know is that she’s become a bad habit. One that can easily get him into the worst kind of trouble if it gets out of hand. And it will only be worse because he should know better. And he does know better. So he promises himself this is the last time he will have her.

And if tonight is all he will ever have, then tonight will be the stuff people write songs about.

His name from her lips come out as a breath spilling onto his skin and warming him from the inside out. It’s surreal, from him walking through her door, to finding her mid-step, to his arms reaching out and seizing her in his embrace in a desperate hold. Somehow, tonight feels more like a dream than any other night before.

Perhaps it’s the knowing that this is the end. He knows it, and so does she, and even without words silent understanding flows between them. Tomorrow the sun will rise and this dream will finally have ended. But for tonight, when tonight is all they have left, she closes her eyes and allows the world to vanish outside the walls of this small room. Nothing else exists but his ragged breaths against her and her whimpering into his kiss. He takes her face into his hands and lays his forehead against hers and his eyes convey apologies words would only diminish if spoken out loud. She sighs into his wrist and presses her lips into his raging pulse.

Be it a week or an hour, his heart aches when he’s apart from her. Holding her so close now only strengthens his yearning. But now he has to walk away before he can’t anymore. Just like this, the strings that hold his heart together begin to snap one by one and he’s left musicless and wallowing in empty silence. All he can hope for now is that perhaps someday they can meet again. That their paths are woven so closely, so intricately, there is no way the strings that tie them together would unravel so easily. Perhaps all they need to do is wait.

So for tonight, he leaves butterfly kisses down her cheek and her jaw, and his lips follow with feather-like touches on her skin. When she looks into his eyes, it breaks him. Staggered by the emotion splayed so blatantly in them, how is he supposed to say goodbye now?

“Just tell me you don’t want me,” he rasps into her ear.

She’s always a mystery to him. Sungjin never truly understands her, though he tries so hard. The more he chased after her, the more she flitted away like a butterfly in the wind. Figuring out where he stood in her life causes him so much pain but so does giving her up and letting her go. Every time he pursues her in his thoughts, he only ends up lost and tied in the same place. Right now, however, Sungjin is kissing her concrete and real.

“Say it,” he nearly begs, “say this is over.”

Her hands dive into his hair and she tugs him closer than ever, she’s kissing him with both lips and teeth. Then they’re stumbling over furniture, over each other’s feet, until the back of his knees bump against her bed and he’s falling back, landing on the mattress with her on top of him. In her eyes is a vulnerability, a sudden uncertainty Sungjin has never seen before.

The collision of skin ignites a fire of passion Sungjin has only come to know through her. One touch of her fingertips fumbling with the buttons of his shirt is enough to set loose the restraint he painstakingly keeps in check. Then his hands are sailing on her skin, holding her as if he were playing his guitar. Every gasp, every moan from her cherry lips is music to his ears and he draws from her more music until she’s singing into his kiss. Lost in her hot breath on his tongue, the suffocating binds of loneliness that chain them apart are finally broken. For the first time, Sungjin can breathe.

With her back flush against his chest, she fits her head under his chin and settles her weight into him. He leaves a kiss on her shoulder, holds her close until her scars heal, until all the ice in her heart warms in the heat of his embrace. He takes her hand in his and traces notes on her palm. Music with words she may never hear with her ears, but will be in his heart. In this moment where they breathe as one, wrapped in the same blanket in a corner of this room, Sungjin says goodbye.

  
  


It’s been two weeks, three days, and fourteen hours since Sungjin said goodbye.

“You did what?”

This is not the reaction Sungjin is expecting. Though to be fair, Sungjin isn’t sure what to expect. Do they not know him to be the type of guy who makes decisions only after careful planning and extensive thought? There’s a very good reason he’s the leader of the band, and it’s not just because of seniority.

Sitting cross-legged on his separate solo bed, Jae taps the bottom of his chin in deep thought. “So you broke it off with her.”

“Technically we can’t break up if we were never together,” Sungjin answers more pointedly than he likes. He’s leaning against the doorjamb to Jae, Brian, and Dowoon’s room. The maknae is outside with Wonpil, cleaning up after dinner.

Brian, too, looks up from his laptop. “How are you?”

“Relieved,” Sungjin lies. “At least this way I know where we stand, right? Makes more sense this way. Besides, we’re not allowed to date, remember?”

“So how is she?” Jae asks.

This catches Sungjin off-guard. “I don’t know. She’s always been so vague it’s hard to tell. Doesn’t matter now anyway.” What he doesn’t say is that he’s afraid she could replace him so easily. Afraid that he’s hurt her in ways he never means to do. That he isn’t the only one in pain. Is she crying over him? Is she overworking herself as he is?

Brian shrugs and sprawls and stretches on his bottom-bunk mattress. “I guess. If you’re sure.”

“Did you ask her?” Jae asks. “Was that a thing?”

Sungjin crosses his arms over his torso. “It’s complicated. It didn’t really work that way.” Try as he did to keep his personal life a secret from his bandmates, Sungjin could only go so far without being caught. For one, he lives with these guys and spend an inordinate amount of time with each other. They know things about each other they don’t need nor want to know. They don’t know everything, but they know enough blackmail is a viable option. They know too much they can’t ever go their separate ways in fear of extortion.

“But you really liked her,” Jae begins. “I mean, there must’ve been a reason.”

Reasons, Sungjin had plenty. Doesn’t mean the feeling was reciprocated. “Yeah. So what?”

“So nothing, I guess.”

Sungjin knows there’s more Jae isn’t saying and more commentary Brian isn’t supplying, but none of them are in the mood to talk about it at this point. Besides, Sungjin doesn’t want more reminders of what he’s missing. He’s done such a good job not letting his feelings get in the way of his professionalism. Sure, he’s writing and composing more. That’s always a good thing. But that’s about all he has. In the end, all he gets from love is a love song.

Wonpil hasn’t said a word about anything. Being his roommate— being Wonpil— Sungjin expected...more. Anything, really. Other than his usual antics, Sungjin hasn’t been on the receiving end of thoughts, comments, questions, or violent reactions. Until tonight.

“You were happy,” Wonpil says. 

Sungjin is staring at the bunk above him, waiting for sleep when he hears his roommate’s voice pierce the silence of their room. At first, he doesn’t think the words were for him, but no one else is the room. “Yeah?”

“I could tell. Everyone could tell. In a way. You were happy. You really liked her.”

Sungjin doesn’t want to talk about it— he’s never been the type to talk about anything. He’d give a post-game analysis, but only after the fact and with only the relevant details. It’s pointless now anyway. “Doesn’t matter.”

He’s had this conversation just minutes ago. He’s still just as annoyed. Can’t they tell he doesn’t want to talk about it? It’s not as if it will change things. It’s over. He made the decision after careful deliberation.

“Because of the rules,” Wonpil supplies.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe all you need to do is wait. Maybe you’ll get back together again.” Wonpil made it sound so easy.

“That’s just it,” Sungjin sighs. “I’m tired of waiting.”

Wonpil takes a moment before he answers again. “Maybe she’s waiting, too. Maybe you’re both just waiting for the right time. Maybe, I don’t know, you’re both just scared so you wait instead.”

“Just go to sleep, Wonpil.”

“Okay. Good night.”

  
  


With his white Les Paul flush against him and his lips kissing the mic, Sungjin thinks there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. The metallic wail of Jae’s Statocaster is followed by the crash of Sungjin’s metal riffs and the moshpit screaming their lyrics back to them. Brian’s bass carries the heartbeat, while Wonpil’s synths take them high. And Dowoon, Dowoon is the backbone that aligns their music to time.

The crowd is a sea of elbows and shoulders pressed together, heads bobbing to the music as Sungjin pours out heartache onto the dancefloor. It’s not enough that his warm scratchy voice leaves a wreckage after a crescendo of high notes and the echoing of feedback. He relishes in the moment.

And it’s then he sees her.

She’s here.

Like a beacon in the crowd, his eyes home in on her. She is all he sees. Every word spilling from his mouth takes on new meaning, every note that leaves his throat is raw with feelings he’s hidden away. Even when he closes his eyes, the image of her smiling face greets him. From her, there is no escape. Sungjin doesn’t know if this time it’s real or if he’s imagining her there. So he sings until his voice breaks.

Wonpil points her out after, as they’re hauling their equipment back to their van. He finds her waiting for him in the alley between the club and the parking lot. She’s leaning against the concrete wall, dressed in skintight jeans and an oversized plaid shirt, looking like she’s up to no good. Sungjin says as much.

“You look like you’re about to cause trouble.” The steadiness in his voice surprises even him. 

“If that’s what you like, I can do that.”

Sungjin glances back at their van, at Jae watching them from a distance and at Brian pointedly not looking at them. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, there’s this band that plays here sometimes...I think I’ve become a fan—”

“Could you just answer the question, please?”

She straightens up, anxiously tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and takes a breath. “I came to say sorry.”

Once more, she manages to catch him completely off-guard.

“For everything,” she continues. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I shouldn’t have...anyway...I’m sorry.”

“Is that all you came here to say?” He doesn’t have his hopes up. He can put all this behind him easily, pretend it never even happened. It’s not like he has proof. And all the better to deny the reality that his heart is breaking.

She flinches and it’s almost enough for Sungjin to take her back. “I don’t know what else I can say that you’ll believe.”

“I’ll believe the truth.”

“I’m in love with you.” The way she says it is both certain and unsure. Words he knows she’s never said out loud before.

“That’s the truth?”

“I’m serious. I don’t care if it’s too late. I’m in love with you and I think I have been for a very long time. I’m sorry I pretended that I felt nothing. I guess I was scared. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I push people away. Especially the ones that care about me—”

“Say that again in a lot less words.”

“I love you, Sungjin.”

Sungjin pushes forward, already shaking from the mere memory of her kiss and the feel of her in his arms. “Good—”

“Uhm.” They’re interrupted by Dowoon. “Excuse me. But…” the drummer awkwardly gestures toward their van and at their crew. “Sorry.”

She laughs and sinks back into the shadows cast on the wall. “I’m sorry,” she says, still in between laughs. “You should go.”

Sungjin doesn’t know how to feel. It’s all the things all at the same time, but mostly it’s the feeling of wanting to hit something. Like someone’s pulled the plug just as he’s at the climax of a guitar solo. He turns to Dowoon and, through gritted teeth, thanks him for the reminder.

“It’s also really nice to meet you,” Dowoon says to her. “I’m looking forward to seeing more of you around.”

Sungjin drags himself and the youngest away with a long-suffering sigh. There are about a bajillion things going on in his mind right now, but he is foremost the leader of the band and responsibility comes first. His only reprieve is the message on his phone that comes just as he settles into his seat. Jae and Wonpil crowd him from his left and behind him respectively and he’s too exhausted to bother telling them off when even Brian is lowkey trying to read from his right side.

_ I’ll wait. You’re worth the wait. _

He tucks his phone back in his pocket with a giddy smile on his face. There are still so many things they need to talk about, so much to sort out, feelings to make sense of. But for now, though here with four other guys isn’t where he wants to be, Sungjin allows himself this moment to relish being hers.

 


End file.
